Conventionally, a liquid fat or oil such as corn oil, rapeseed oil, soybean oil, cottonseed oil, rice oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, high-oleic safflower oil, high-oleic sunflower oil, sesame oil, and olive oil has been mainly used as a fat or oil for cooking of tempura and fry.
The fats or oils are easily used and inexpensive, but have problems such as the occurrence of degraded oil odor caused by heating, and the bad appearance of batter (dispersibility of the batter), oily feeling, and bad texture of a deep-fried food obtained by using the fats or oils in deep-fry cooking.
Meanwhile, a triterpene alcohol is a tetracyclic compound having 30 or 31 carbon atoms and is a component widely distributed in plants such as rice bran, wheat, sesame, soybean, cocoa, coconut, corn seeds, olive seeds, and aloe. Further, the triterpene alcohol is a main component of an alcohol part constituting γ-oryzanol. A variety of reports have been made on physiological functions of the triterpene alcohol and the like, and the triterpene alcohol is known to have a blood cholesterol-reducing effect and a lipid absorption-suppressing effect (for example, Non Patent Document 1 and Patent Document 1).
Based on recent health trends, an attempt to impart the physiological functions of the triterpene alcohol and the like to edible oils has been made, and there have been reported, for example, an edible fat or oil which includes oryzanol, a free type or fatty acid ester type phytosterol, and a free type or fatty acid ester type triterpene alcohol and has a blood lipid-improving function (Patent Document 2), and an edible oil which includes a tocopherol, a tocotrienol, a free type sterol, a sterol ester, a cycloartenol, and a saturated fat and can reduce the synthesis, absorption, and blood level of cholesterol and increase excretion of cholesterol (Patent Document 3), and the like.